


The Real Thing

by ffantastic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Universe, Cats, Fluff, Implied Getting Together, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Valentine's Day, attempted humor, cute if you like cats, kind of, kitty klance, weird altean traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-21 22:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14924295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ffantastic/pseuds/ffantastic
Summary: Lance wakes up to a cat in his bed. It's a beautiful black cat, but the Venn diagram of 'traits that endear the cat to Lance' and 'things the cat has in common with Keith' can't overlap. Even if the cat might actuallybeKeith.





	The Real Thing

**Author's Note:**

> cats + klance = source of my happiness
> 
> my goal was to finish this before s6 and guess what i managed! it doesn't take place in any particular time frame, though s2 would be the best approximation for the klance dynamic.
> 
> it's also in part inspired by the absolutely adorable fluffy klance cats [ smol-ghosts ](http://smol-ghosts.tumblr.com) has drawn. i imagined cat keith exactly like that while writing.
> 
> this also doesn't have anything to do with the new season, i started writing this at a time i still thought i might finish it in time for valentine's day. it's really not intentionally furry-centric.

There was a cat in Lance's bed.

He was still sluggish, blinking sleep out of his eyes, but the mass of fur on his pillow was unmistakable. Fluffy black fur, triangular ears, bushy tail wrapped around itself, and the smell of unwashed cat tickling his nose. Along with some stray fur – the cat was shedding.

Lance sat up and stared. He was still in his room on the castleship, still in the pajamas he'd worn to bed last night. There had never been a cat on the castleship. There had never been a cat anywhere in space - small fluffy animals and creatures with whiskers and twitching furry ears, sure. But nothing like a real Earth cat.

He plunged his hand into the cat's fur. It was soft, and long enough for his whole hand to disappear. He dug his fingers into the cat's back, scratched behind its ear just as it twitched. The cat shook its head. Lance laughed.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily, buddy."

The cat gave a deep, dissatisfied meow in return and lifted its head. It blinked at Lance with big, dark eyes, and despite its artfully tousled fur and all the fluff, it had an angular face. It was the most beautiful cat Lance had ever seen.

"If you were human, I would've said you're the love of my life."

The cat blinked at him and meowed softly.

"Never mind. You _are_ the love of my life."

The cat showed its affection through headbutts and scratches, but when Lance stood up to clean his bloody hand and get dressed, it watched, ears perked, and trailed after him to the bathroom. It lurked around the corner while he dressed and flit out into the hallway with Lance. Instead of darting to wherever it had come from, the cat sat in front of Lance's door with attentive eyes, bushy tail swinging. Lance took a step. The cat did, too. Lance was grinning by the time they had reached the dining hall, and the scratches barely stung anymore.

So the cat liked Lance, was a little attached to him. But where had it come from, and why? Allura seemed like the best option to answer appropriately, but she wasn’t at breakfast yet. There were only Hunk and Coran, engaged in conversation on the far end of the table, and Pidge. She lifted her head from her bowl when Lance came closer.

"Ew." She turned back to her breakfast.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, I didn’t mean _you_. I meant that cat. It looks like it's been outside for way too long. It needs… a bath, or something."

Hunk had come over in the meantime.

"Yeah, it needs a comb. Or just a radical haircut."

Lance looked back at the cat. It sat behind his leg, black fluff and large, deep blue eyes, and blinked at Lance slowly, tail wound around itself. Lance's heart clenched, and something in him snapped.

"Are you kidding me?"

He bent to lift the cat into his arms. It gave a high-pitched meow and scratched Lance's hands in a desperate attempt to escape, but Lance held tight.

"This is the prettiest cat I have ever seen. Look at his eyes! He's a star!"

Hunk smiled at Lance as if he had said something poetical and brave, and Pidge snorted something unintelligible into her bowl. Lance furrowed his brows and opened his mouth to retort something, but Coran leaned over to stroke the cat. It hissed and glared at Coran, but belly-up, with fur this soft, it was the opposite of intimidating. Lance had to hold himself back from cooing.

"Hm, yes, the resemblance really is uncanny."

Coran twirled his mustache and smiled. Lance stared at him.

"Resemblance… to who?"

"Oh!" Coran stopped twirling his mustache. "No one told you?"

Lance shook his head.

"So – that cat is actually Keith-"

"What?!"

Lance threw his arms out to the side. The cat landed at his feet, gave a disdainful meow, and stalked away. It didn’t have anything in common with Keith apart from general coloring. Lance was sweating now. This was a human being, not an innocent kitty who didn’t understand the details of language. He had said some weird things to the cat. His cheeks were heating up.

Coran held his hands up.

"Settle down, my boy." He winked at Lance for whatever reason, "this is not Keith transformed into a cat. It's, in simple terms, what Keith would be like if he was a cat."

Lance wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was a better explanation for his nerves, but not easier to believe.

"I know what you want to ask, of course." Coran laid an arm around Lance's shoulders, "it's an old Altean tradition for-"

The door slid open just as Lance wished Allura would take over for Coran and Keith walked in, staring at the floor with an absent smile. All remaining tension sagged out of Lance. Keith might not be Allura, but at least he was proof that Lance hadn’t cooed over and cuddled with transformed Keith this morning. He wouldn’t have been able to laugh _that_ off. Coran shook him by the shoulder.

"I told you, didn’t I?" he said and whisked away to the other end of the kitchen.

Lance sat next to Pidge. She groaned.

"What?"

"Aren't you hearing that?"

Lance frowned. There was a sound, not loud or overbearing, but like – a cat hopped onto the table. A second cat, brown fur and not as fluffy as Keith-cat. Human Keith sat on the other side of the table, and the cat faced him, meowing with its tail high in the air. Lance swallowed. Something about the cat was familiar.

Pidge groaned again. Keith looked over.

"Shh," he made, eyebrows drawn deep into his face, "can't you hear he's telling a story?"

He fixed Pidge with an intense stare, before the cat with its incessant meowing drew his attention away. Heat settled into Lance's cheeks again. He averted his eyes, and locked gazes with Coran. Lance stared at his smug smile and mouthed _is that?_ Coran grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.

Sweat trickled down the side of Lance's face. Cat him flicked his tail back and forth, meowing at Keith, who listened, blinking slowly and smiling. Keith's hair was nice and thick and shiny, and it framed his angular face perfectly. Something heavy twisted in Lance's chest.

Keith looked up, and his eyes, large and dark, and how his hair fell over his brow was too familiar. Lance's heart was beating too fast, his mind racing to a conclusion he'd never wanted to reach, but cat Lance was quicker. He hissed, and an answering hiss came from the corner. Lance jolted in his seat. Cat Keith strutted from the corner, fur matted from a poor attempt at cleaning. Cat Lance jumped from the table to stand in front of cat Keith. Their tails bushed up, straight in the air, and Lance held his breath. Cat Lance hissed again. Cat Keith hissed back, jumped, and the cats bolted out of the room.

The expression on Keith's face was unreadable, but there was a crease on his forehead, and Lance had the split-second vision of Keith hissing, and chasing him around the castle. Vision-Lance was having fun, laughing, ducking into dark hallways, and making Keith laugh, too.

Hunk sat next to Lance with a heavy sigh, and the vision vanished. He was almost disappointed.

"So, where have the kitties gone?"

"Chasing each other around the castle."

"Like their human counterparts," Pidge mumbled into her bowl.

"Does it look like we're chasing each other around the castle?"

Keith stared at his food as if he hadn’t said anything. Somehow, it still made Lance smile.

\--

Allura found Lance some time later. He was ambling around the corridors in a pause between training and regular meals, and she came from the opposite direction, purpose in her steps. Her face lit up when she saw Lance, and he came to a stop, surprised. Not a lot of people were happy to spot Lance somewhere lately.

"Lance," she called out, "I was looking for you, let's walk for a bit."

He was too stunned to answer, even though she had given him such a great opening. Lance turned around slowly and walked alongside Allura. She was quiet, but something in the swing of her arms, her serene smile ticked him off.

"Is this about the cats?"

She faltered, smile now shaky, but inclined her head yes.

"It was a nice surprise that the machine still worked. I… doubted it would, but Hunk is a miracle worker."

"So, Hunk repaired it? Why didn’t he tell me anything?"

"He didn’t?"

Lance's eyes narrowed at the surprise in Allura's voice.

"No, I don’t think so-"

Allura cleared her throat.

"Well, it was supposed to be a Valentine's day surprise. Although we miscalculated the Earth date…"

"Valentine's day? Altea had Valentine's day?"

Hunk had made one or two remarks about Valentine's day, but he had passed it off as an attempt at guessing the date back on Earth. Maybe Lance should have been more suspicious – but there was nothing threatening about the cats. Only that the words Valentine's day, connected with everything that had already happened, sent a jab of apprehension through him.

"Not exactly – it was called –" Allura made a sound like a backwards sneeze, and Lance could not even comprehend it as a word, "and in general a little different. But similar enough that I can accept calling it 'Valentine's day'."

"So, the cat thing is a tradition for Valentine's day? Are cats that romantic for Alteans?"

"Not particularly. The 'Valentine's day' on Altea was a day of romance, yes, but it was also a day of truth. And what creature is more truthful in its affection than a cat?"

Lance shuffled his feet and sighed. It did make sense, but it also weighed heavily in his gut with the question he now had to ask.

"Then why me and Keith?" His voice was too high and on the verge of panicked, so he cleared his throat and tucked on: "Why not everyone? I would’ve loved to see everyone's cat!"

Allura turned her eyes to him with another peculiar smile that tightened its grip on his heart in fear and in admiration. She had the chance to crush him, here.

"The simple way to put it would be – the machine works with an input of hair or an equivalent, and Keith's is the easiest to obtain out of anyone on this ship."

Lance pursed his lips, trying to hold back his laughter. When he glanced at Allura, her lips were pursed, too, and when their eyes met, they both burst into giggles. Just a little bit. Allura reigned herself in faster than Lance did.

"Also, the machine can only produce two cats at once. If the input is of more than two individuals, the machine chooses who is most fit. We did put everyone's hair in. The machine decided who would most benefit from the cats."

"What… are you trying to say?"

Lance's throat was closing up. There weren’t a lot of interpretations for her words, and he didn’t like any of them. Allura's face remained calm.

"Oh, nothing, really. There can be a lot of reasons for the machine choosing the right cats."

He breathed out, only a bit relaxed.

"Okay, so, it's… magic?"

"In a way. Yes."

She paused, sighed, and devolved into a recounting of old Altean Valentine's day tales that involved the cats, ones she had experienced herself and ones that had been passed down through generations. Her voice grew stronger as she continued, and Lance listened more to the enthusiasm in her words than whatever message she was trying to convey. There had to be something special about the cats, something eye-opening and life-changing, even if it only lasted for a day.

Silence settled between them, and Allura's steps sped up a little.

"I had better go find Keith now," she said, "he must still be terribly confused."

Lance nodded. _He_ was still confused, but there were too many questions he still wanted to ask, so he settled for the first one his mind grabbed onto.

"Are the cats any different from regular Earth cats?"

"Not that I know of. What are Earth cats like?"

There was no all-encompassing answer, so Lance shrugged, and they parted ways with a quick smile and a wave. Lance had only walked across one more corridor when a soft meow came to his ears. From a dark hallway, the fluffy black cat he had found in his bed this morning stared at him with his deep eyes, reflective in the low light. He meowed again, and Lance crouched down.

"Heyyy little guy.".

He held out his hand. Cat Keith came and pushed his head against his palm, fur so soft, matted in places, so beautiful and rich in color, dark eyes, slowly blinking, fixed right on him. Lance cooed and ran his hand over the cat's head, a smile on his lips as the cat meowed and nudged Lance's hand. Nothing was as pleasing as a cat's affection when you didn’t have any treats on you.

Somewhere in the dark of the corridor, a faint meow echoed, and Lance's head snapped up to meet two glowing eyes. Cat Lance strolled into the straying light, fur glinting. Lance's heart stuttered. Cat him was beautiful, groomed and proud, but something impish twinkled in his eyes, the kind of cat that would protect a baby from a rampant dog.

Cat Lance meowed, and cat Keith's right ear turned toward the sound. They had chased each other out of the room a few hours prior, and cat Keith's twitching ear made Lance nervous. He and Keith might have been getting along better now, but who knew what their friendship would look like as cats, stripped from social norms and barriers. He didn’t want to find out. He also didn’t want to break up a cat fight, so he held out a hand to cat Lance.

The cat walked over, one smooth paw in front of the other, and Lance smiled. Cat him would bump into his hand, like cat Keith had done, and he would fawn over him, and the other cat would disappear, to wherever he had his next important business to attend to.

Cat Lance approached, gave Lance's hand a sniff, stared at him, gave a short meow, and bumped into cat Keith's side. Lance drew in a sharp breath.

"Noooo," he made, trying to separate the cats with gentle hands, but –

Cat Keith lifted his head to blink at cat Lance but did not hiss. He meowed, blinked, and when cat Lance meowed back, already stalking down the dark corridor again, cat Keith followed him without another glance back. Lance stared after them. In the distance, soft paws pattered.

\--

Lance wandered into the lounge to find Keith already sitting there. Absorbed in something on his tablet, he only nodded at Lance. Lance sat down and drummed his fingers on his bouncing leg. He hadn’t come to the lounge with a plan or even an intention, but Keith was here, and the light reflected off his hair just so, and they had something weird in common here. He coughed. Keith snapped his head toward him, eyes wide.

"So."

Keith stared.

"Was cat me in your room when you woke up?"

Keith blinked and put his tablet away.

"No." He took a moment to think. "He was in front of the door. Woke me up with meowing."

"Oh."

Keith cleared his throat.

"So… you had a cat in your room this morning? And it just didn’t seem strange to you at all?"

Lance shrugged.

"Of course, it was weird, but we're in an ancient castle that's also a spaceship? And it's a cute cat."

Something in Keith's face changed, as if he had bitten into something he'd expected to be sour, but it turned out sweet. Oh.

"I mean, cats are just cute by definition. I wouldn’t have chased any cat away."

The strange new crease between Keith's brows smoothed out, and Lance leaned back. A sound behind him, and he sat straight again. He tried to ignore it, but it lingered, a deep hum behind him.

"Is that," Keith said, brows furrowed again, "a cat?"

"More like two cats."

Lance tucked on a laugh to make it sound less accidental, but the look Keith threw him over his shoulder was inscrutable.

He followed Keith to the corner of the room where – well. There were two cats. Two fluffy cats, snuggled together so closely the colors of their fur were blending together, tails intertwined, rumbling with the force of two cats purring.

Cat Keith and cat Lance were not playing catch or meowing to each other from across the hallway. They were one mass of fur, cuddled together, no distinct cat parts but a twitching black ear and a pink snout, their purring deep and contented. Cat Keith wound his chin up from where it had been wedged and shoved it further into cat Lance's fluffiest part under his chin, blunt but affectionate, and cat Lance gave a questioning little _mrow_ in return and nudged the other cat with a paw.

Lance felt sick. If Allura hadn’t been so clear about it, he would’ve questioned that this cat could ever be a representation of real Keith. This morning, he might have still believed it, when he'd chased cat Lance out of the kitchen, more like a play fight than anything else, but doubt grew in him when he found the cats convening in dark, remote hallways, and resting in an affectionate bundle. They didn’t hate each other. Lance didn’t hate Keith, sure, and he never had. There were still traces of how he had once resented him, but Keith disliked Lance a lot more than Lance disliked Keith. Dislike wasn’t the main feeling he harbored for Keith. He didn’t know _what_ the main feeling was, but their cuddled-up cats made his cheeks burn, but also his eyes, and it made him – it made him want to-

Lance wrenched his eyes away from the tangle of cats. They were still a little wet, but he glanced at Keith - he was still focused on the cats. Under Lance's gaze, he turned around to face him slowly. Keith was unguarded, his eyes wide, his posture open, and there might have been a flush to his cheeks. It took Lance off guard, but maybe-blushing Keith was gone the next time Lance blinked. His eyes were back to their normal size and he'd crossed his arms.

"Yeah," he said, and strode past Lance to leave the room, "those are two cats, alright."

\--

Keith was still in a bad mood – or at least a weird mood – at dinner. He sat next to Lance, like always, but he ignored him, ignored everything around him, only focused on his food. This wasn’t an unusual state for Keith, it happened every week or so, but it was unusual how it affected Lance. It might have been the direct contrast to how open and affectionate cat Keith was, how Lance could still feel him flit between his legs, fluffy tail brushing his jeans, meowing at him. He wanted to reach over, poke Keith, make him do something apart from listlessly passing his spoon to his mouth. All Lance's concentration went into keeping his hands to himself, tightly clenched at his side, and the silence around the dinner table didn’t register in his mind until Hunk coughed.

"So, did the cats do something? Something special, I mean?"

Lance looked at Hunk's curious grin, Allura's polite smile and giddy hands, Coran and Pidge still distracted in the corner, Shiro glancing over, confused. He didn’t look at Keith, but he knew he had stiffened up, hand clenched around his spoon.

"No, I haven’t seen them since breakfast. Why?"

His voice might have been too high, his words too fast to sound relaxed, but he smiled and leaned back in his chair, and no one objected. Hunk and Allura shared a glance, but it was more disappointed than disbelieving.

"Aw, I heard so many cool stories about what used to happen sometimes back on Altea. There's this one tradition where-"

Allura made a noise in the back of her throat, but Hunk continued, undeterred. Lance was stuck to his seat, heart pattering in uneasy anticipation.

"This one tradition where if the cats evidently liked each other by the end of the day – since, you know, cats are usually solitary and stuff – there's a ceremony that is basically equivalent to a wedding."

"They married cats?!"

Lance's voice was a screech, but he couldn’t even cringe internally. He was holding on desperately to the wrong part of the sentence, the obvious false implication. Keith's posture hadn’t changed, but even out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the white of his knuckles where he clutched his spoon.

"No, no, that is an exaggeration. This ceremony existed, but it was not mandatory at all, and more complicated than Hunk made it sound – forgive me."

Lance's heart was still beating too fast, and his shaking hands were traitorous, but at least he didn’t have to take the situation seriously anymore. He leaned back in his chair again and grinned.

"Whew, I'm relieved. For a moment I thought I was gonna have to get married to Mr. Grumpypants over here."

He reached over and patted Keith on the shoulder. Lance could barely reach, but it was worth it for the glance Keith threw him – less annoyed than he had expected, something pained and resigned in his eyes. Keith groaned and rolled his eyes before he turned back to his meal, but his shoulders had relaxed again, and smiling came a little easier for Lance.

Allura cleared her throat.

"Actually-"

With shining eyes, she explained what the ceremony had meant and involved, something about the sincere nature of cats, and how they broke down inhibitions in anyone, made it easier to acknowledge difficult feelings. Lance tried to tune it out, but there wasn’t much else to concentrate on. Everyone else was listening, smiling and nodding along, even Keith had lifted his head, and Coran soon joined in, added his own experiences. It was a little too much, and the lights in the kitchen were too bright for Lance to yield to the truth of his jittery knees and his heart beating in his throat.

\--

Lance met cat Keith on the way back to his room, and in the lighting of the hallway, his fur did seem matted and a little too long. Lance sighed and picked him up. He gave a disdainful meow but didn’t struggle, and he was so soft, lighter than he looked. No human's eyes or hair could compare. The cat in his arms, beautiful and trusting, made Lance's heart beat faster. He was a gorgeous cat, and the similarities to Keith didn’t detract. But this was not Keith, it was a cat, a cat that liked Lance and willingly jumped into his arms and licked his scratches when he hurt him, so he didn’t have that much in common with Keith after all.

Lance had refused to see it this morning, but the cat needed a bath and a trim. Bathing cats wasn't the most pleasing job in the universe, but Lance wasn’t used to the universe's most pleasing jobs anyway, and he had some experience with helping bathe little children.

Cat Keith liked bathing more than any Earth cat Lance had heard about. He splashed around a bit and meowed at Lance accusingly, but it only made Lance laugh. He gave the cat a foam hat, and a foam mustache, and giggled at his indignant meows and his indignant gaze. Lance rinsed his thick black fur and lifted him out of the tub, and there was a dripping ball of wet fur in his arms, and his shirt was also dripping, but it was worth it for the soft little meow, and for how the cat purred wrapped in a towel. He accepted the brush and comb, purring on Lance's lap, eyes closed, tail swishing back and forth.

Lance had already changed into pajamas after the cat had drenched his shirt, and now, a dry, clean fluff ball on his lap, nothing held him back from pulling the hand still holding the brush to his mouth to shield his yawn. Two heavy paws on his stomach and a low meow objected. Lance dropped the hand from his mouth. The cat stared at him, and gave another meow, sinking his paws in with a little more emphasis. Lance blinked, and chuckled.

"Alright buddy, the cuddling doesn’t have to stop, but how about we lie down?"

Cat Keith blinked once. Lance waved his hand, the lights dimmed, and he laid back, cat Keith settling into the curve of his arm. Lance turned to him and met his glowing eyes. They returned his gaze, deep and earnest, and there was no one else here. It was dark, and not as lonely as he was used to. Lance nuzzled his nose into the black fur and whispered:

"You're cute, but I also wish I had the real thing."

\--

Lance woke up alone, like every morning. No trace of cat was left, no hair, no crumple in the sheets, no warm spot. Like a lot of things on Earth, too, Altean Valentine's day traditions only lasted for one day.

Cat Keith had been a part of Lance's life for only one day, but he missed him. He missed his unique eyes and his soft fur, his low meows and headbutts, his subtle but unmistakable way of showing affection. Lance shuffled to the kitchen, and however much he strained his ears, there were no distant meows. Heart heavy in his stomach, he opened the doors to the kitchen, to find Keith already sitting there, staring into his bowl.

Dark circles adorned his eyes, and he greeted Lance without moving a single facial muscle. Something was different about Keith this morning. Nothing had physically changed, but just the dejected tilt of his shoulders made Lance want to cheer him up, care for him. The painfully warm mass in his chest demanded it, insisted, and maybe Lance was the different one.

He couldn’t offer to draw Keith a bath and wash his hair, but he kind of got the feeling Keith might have been missing the cats, too, and Lance was familiar with missing things. He sat next to Keith and met his eyes. His gaze was carefully blank, but also expecting, hopeful.

"Cat you was _so_ fluffy," Lance sighed.

"Yeah?" Life crept into Keith's voice.

Lance smiled.

"Yeah. I don’t know how they got a cat like that out of someone like you."

Keith bristled, brows furrowing, but the corners of his mouth twitched. Lance was grinning now.

"Hey, what is that supposed to mean?"

"Just that there's nothing fluffy about you, you're all skin and bones."

"Are you talking to yourself?"

Lance caught a bit of food goo Keith had flung at him with his mouth just as the others showed up, and he grinned at them with his mouth full. And when he turned around again to find another cat-related thing to annoy Keith with, Keith was smiling at him, a real, wide smile, no slumping shoulders anymore. Lance grinned broader and something warm and satisfied settled in his gut.

\--

Keith and Pidge were talking in the lounge room when Lance strolled in later that day. Keith followed Pidge's rapidly moving hands, frowning.

"Oh, Lance, right moment for you to show up, you can hear this, too."

She was in the middle of a detailed explanation of the Altean cat machine, and most of the technical terms eluded him, but it still made Lance smile. Pidge was trying to make them feel better in her own way. The cats were designed with a short lifespan, there had been nothing wrong with them, he hadn’t mistreated cat Keith. It didn’t make him miss the cat any less. But it did make it a little more bearable. Lance locked eyes with Keith, and he was smiling as well.

"Hey, Pidge," Lance said, "to be honest, for the last minute I've had like, no idea what you've been on about."

"Oh." She closed her mouth, blinked. A fog lifted from her eyes, and she looked from Lance to Keith and back again. Lance swallowed and chose not to interpret the smirk on her face any further.

"I'll leave you two to it."

Keith and Lance were alone again. The silence in the room spread out, sprouted roots and a stem and branches and spun leaves between them. A pattern spread out from the ceiling lights, stayed in Lance’s vision when he looked at Keith.

Keith's hair mesmerized Lance. It fell like a silk curtain, obsidian, shining. Keith's hair looked so much like cat Keith's fur and he missed the feeling of cat fur under his fingertips. Lance blinked once, and his hand was in Keith's hair.

Time slowed. Lance watched as Keith stiffened and turned his eyes toward Lance without moving his head. Lance moved his fingers, to weave his fingertips further into Keith's hair, to feel it cascading across his hand.

Keith's brows were furrowed, his mouth open as if he'd wanted to say something but forgotten it halfway through the first syllable. And his eyes, wide, open, the exact dark blue the cat had also stared at Lance with. There had been something serene in the cat's stare, full of a quiet affection, and the same shone in Keith's eyes. Lance’s heart missed a beat.

"I was just seeing if your hair feels the same as the cat's!"

His voice was too sudden and loud in the silence. Lance snatched his hand back and pushed it under his leg. It still tingled with the ghost of Keith's too-soft hair, and heat settled in his cheeks, his heartbeat uneven.

"So?"

Keith's eyes were still a little wider than normal, but there was a hard tilt to his mouth. He was dead-set on ignoring anything embarrassing.

"So… what?"

There might have been a logical follow-up to what Lance had said, but Lance didn’t know what he had said. Keith breathed out through his nose, and the fake steel resolve melted into something more real, something softer.

"How does my hair compare to cat fur?"

Keith wasn’t meeting Lance's eyes, looking a little to the left, and his ears shone red. It didn’t make Lance more confident. It made his heart beat painfully in his throat. His own voice sounded strange to him over the rush of blood in his ears.

"It's not as fluffy, but it does… hold up… uhh… your eyes though. I swear I looked at that cat and I thought it's impossible to have eyes like that, but then I looked at your eyes, too, and… you have exactly the same impossible eyes."

Keith's eyes darted back and forth between Lance and a spot a little to the left, but he smiled. A small smile, upturned eyebrows, quirked lips. At least three hearts beat inside Lance now, and his breath came quick and short.

"Cat you had pretty eyes, too. And a nice voice."

Keith looked at Lance, not wavering anymore. His eyes were earnest, and Lance was afraid what he might mean with it - maybe not exactly afraid. It made his fingers twitch, it made him sweat, but it didn’t make him want to run away. It made him want to come closer.

"Oh. Really?"

It came out a squeak, and he had to press his eyelids together and will down his blush. Keith made it sound as if cat Lance meant the same and just as much to him as cat Keith did to Lance, and that was hard to grasp when he missed the cat as if he'd been there from the beginning.

Keith's lips were pursed, deep creases in his forehead, his hands balled up on his thighs. The silence was ripe with something, weird and awkward. Lance burst out laughing. Keith followed along.

His heart wasn’t beating in his throat anymore, his pulse was flowing through his fingertips and the pit of his stomach, and it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Laughing transformed Keith, smoothed out his frown and bobbed his hair, made him into the careless teenager he should have been. Lance laughed until his stomach hurt, and his eyes stung, and he had forgotten what he was laughing at.

The laugh lingered on Keith's face as a smile, more subdued now.

"Yeah, I still miss him."

He met Lance's eyes steadily, voice quiet, but sure.

"Oh." Lance cleared his throat, "me too – I mean, I miss cat Keith, too."

Keith's expression didn’t change. His slow, thoughtful blinking made Lance vulnerable, even if he had only spelled out the obvious.

"If you want to, I could be the cat replacement tonight?"

Keith was confident again, not exactly fake, but it still veiled something softer, more earnest beneath. He was implying something, maybe, but Lance took the words for what they were – an offer to share the bed, convenient, because they both missed the cats. Lance smiled a little, and nodded, and pushed the other thought aside.

\--

Lance was already in pajamas when he went over to Keith's room. He held his head high, but he walked as fast as he could. There was nothing wrong about what they were doing, nothing scandalous, but it was weird, and he didn’t want anyone to find out like this. Lance was confused enough without other people butting in.

Convincing Keith to put on his pajamas had taken a lot of energy from Lance, though, and his room was almost a direct mirror image to Lance's. It brought a sense of normalcy back, but there was still something about their situation, something unsaid, unexplained, something he didn’t want to voice or think about, something in Keith's eyes when he looked at him just a little too long.

Keith left to change, and Lance sat, alone, on his bed, in his room. He didn’t know what he was doing. Keith had invited him for a sleepover with complimentary cuddles, and that didn’t sound platonic at all. It didn’t feel platonic either, it felt nerve-wracking and beautiful, like a first date Lance had slid into feet first with his eyes closed. He couldn’t put a name to how he felt about Keith yet, but spending time with cat Keith had shown him all the likable things about him, things he had admired already, but hadn’t allowed himself to admit.

And Keith had invited him. He had asked, stared straight into his eyes and said the words. Lance was welcome. Wanted. The tight clench of his stomach melted, just a weird tingling now instead of a nervous knot. He wanted to sleep in Keith's arms. He wanted to kiss him. Keith, at close quarters, was a lot less like he had expected him to be, and a lot more like something else, someone new to get to know.

Keith returned, in pajamas, and he was so real, frowning but compliant as he settled down in bed next to Lance. He was easier to deal with than imaginary Keith, who asked questions Lance didn’t want to answer and did things he didn’t know how to react to. The real, human Keith next to him sighed and did his best to relax and said things like _stop breathing in my ear_ and _why are you eating my hair_. He was nice to cuddle with, despite his sharp edges and even though he was a lot heavier than a cat and obviously not used to unwinding with someone else close to him.

"So, do you still miss cat me?" Lance asked.

"I don't know. The cat was easier to cuddle with."

Keith's lips were twitching through his frown. Lance wasn’t trying to hide his grin.

"Oh, I don't know. Can a cat do _this_?"

Lance closed his eyes and leaned in.

**Author's Note:**

> this is... kind of a weird story. it's the first fanfic I actually finished in its entirety in years, and I wrote it without an outline (which just means that this draft is edited to death and i can't look at it anymore), just to let myself write whatever the heck I wanted to. and I love cats. I love klance. so that’s the fic.
> 
> anyway thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it :)
> 
> edit: i decided that i didn't want to be a lurker anymore and i desperately need friends, so you can follow me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/cheeseroyalty)!  
> i'm very sad that so many people are leaving the fandom/ have left/ won't be producing content anymore, so i plan to be more active there and post more about my fics and maybe some hcs/ ideas and stuff. if you also still enjoy klance and maybe wanna talk to me, i'd be happy if you checked it out :) i still have enough klance ideas in me to last for years.  
> (and also i need a real beta if someone is interested)


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